In what proves to be a major setback for Democrats in their quest to manipulate the electoral process in America, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that presidential electors in the Electoral College have the right to vote for presidential candidates of their choice.

Progressive Democrats have been actively working to undermine the process put in place by the Founding Fathers to ensure smaller states are heard when electing the president of the United States, looking to do away with the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular vote.

Democrats have been advocating for state laws that would force electors to cast their vote for the winner of the national popular vote — which was Hillary Clinton in 2016 — not the candidate that won the respective state.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, representing 196 electoral votes, have enacted the National Popular Vote compact into law. The list included liberal states like California, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey and Colorado.

The compact will not go into effect when enacted by states possessing the electoral votes needed to elect a President — 270 of 538.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution in 2016 when an elector was removed and his vote was nullified because he refused to cast his ballot for Clinton, who received a plurality of the popular vote in the state, as well as nationally, Fox News reported.

The renegade elector voted for a candidate other than Clinton in hopes of derailing Trump from becoming president.

More from Fox News on the decision:

The split decision by a three-judge panel on the Denver appeals court asserted: “Article II and the Twelfth Amendment provide presidential electors the right to cast a vote for President and Vice President with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right.”

The panel continued, “The electoral college did not exist before ratification of the federal Constitution, and thus the states could reserve no rights related to it under the Tenth Amendment. Rather, the states possess only the rights expressly delegated to them in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment.”

The appeals court reasoned that once electors show up at the Electoral College, they essentially become federal actors performing a “federal function,” independent of state control.

The ruling applies only to Colorado and five other states in the 10th Circuit: Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

A campaign of misinformation continues on the left to convince low information Americans to buy into a system that would allow the popular vote to decide who gets elected president — a scenario where a small number of populous states could decide the outcome of a presidential election.

In effect, this is a headlong push for direct democracy in this country.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. went so far as to say the Electoral College is a “scam.” Through word manipulation, the radical socialist said it was racist, claiming falsely that the Electoral College “weighs white voters over voters of color.”

And that’s music to the ears of Millennials eager to embrace the role of victim in the hope of an easier life.

But Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, put Ocasio-Cortez in her place when she said: “They didn’t say it when Barack Obama won the Electoral College twice.”